Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Kernel 4.14.14 has meltdown / spectre info in /sys

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 1:39 AM, Adam Carter <adamcarter3@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Seems to me like point versions of 4.9 and 4.14 are often released on the
> same date, but fixes that have gone into 4.14 don't make it into 4.9 until
> the subsequent release. Could be my imagination.

One of the issues with Meltdown/Spectre in particular is that the
affected parts of the kernel have undergone some change over the
years, and the changes themselves are not trivial.  For some of the
much older kernels the fixes are basically complete rewrites, with
their own quality issues and timelines.  For 4.9 that probably isn't
as much of a factor, but it wouldn't surprise me if the changes still
migrate their way backwards in time.  There have been regressions with
some of these changes, and that being the case the maintainers might
want to both reduce the number of people impacted and also test them
first on the kernels most similar to mainline where the patches were
developed.

-- 
Rich